Digital advertisement insertion (“DAI”) systems enable media content distributors to switch from a presentation of a digital media program to a presentation of a digital media advertisement and back to the digital media program with essentially no interruption in a continuous presentation of digital media content. For example, at a certain point during a presentation of a digitally distributed on-demand television program, a distributor may wish to stop presenting the program, switch to and present an advertisement, and then switch back to and continue presenting the program, all without an appreciable disruption in the presentation of the program and advertisement content.
DAI systems may receive externally-defined instructions in the form of one or more out-of-band signaling points that indicate when during a presentation of a media program to switch to an advertisement, and at what point in the media program to return to after presenting the advertisement. A signaling point may indicate a breakaway timestamp and a return timestamp. The breakaway timestamp indicates a time within the presentation of the digital media program at which the DAI system should switch to a digital advertisement, and the return timestamp indicates a time within the media program at which the DAI system should resume the presentation of the media program following the digital advertisement.
Many digital media programs are encoded and distributed using a Moving Picture Expert Group (“MPEG”) MPEG-2 coding format (e.g., H.262). However, media content encoded using an MPEG-2 coding format may require more resources (e.g., storage space, bandwidth, etc.) to distribute to end users than other coding formats, such as MPEG-4 coding formats (e.g., H.264). Consequently, media distributors may achieve a more efficient distribution of content by transcoding MPEG-2 coded media content into MPEG-4 coded media content and distributing the MPEG-4 coded media content.
Due to differences between MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 coding formats, DAI signaling points originally intended for use with MPEG-2 coded media content may provide an undesirable viewing experience when applied to MPEG-4 versions of the media content. For example, a return from a presentation of a digital advertisement to a presentation of a media program in the MPEG-4 format at a signaling point originally intended for use with MPEG-2 coded media content may cause the presentation of the media program in the MPEG-4 format to include undesirable content. For instance, the presentation of the media program may include frozen, incomplete, and/or distorted video and/or audio content, which may degrade a viewer's viewing experience.